Trainee nurse, MLO record statements
KARACHI, July 20: Accusing a former medico-legal officer (MLO) of raping her in his apartment in the residential area of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), the trainee nurse told police and the health department’s inquiry team on Tuesday that she was neither abducted nor gang-raped as suggested by a woman lawmaker recently.
Exactly one week after the incident, the rape victim — a third-year student of the JPMC’s School of Nursing — recorded her statement not only before police investigators but also before the health department’s inquiry committee at the surgical intensive care unit of the hospital where she is currently under treatment.
The police investigators recorded her statement under Section 161 (examination of witnesses by police) of the criminal procedure code in which the victim is said to have declared that she did not know the MLO and met him for the first time on July 13.
Sources privy to the contents of her statement quoted her as saying that on July 13 at about 2.45pm after finishing her routine training she was heading towards a bus stop to go home in Korangi when a colleague insisted that she go along with her to the apartment of the MLO who, being influential, could help her obtain better marks in exams.
She said she reached the MLO’s apartment in the residential area of the JPMC along with her colleague where she saw another man, later identified as a private servant of the MLO.
“The nurse was later left alone inside the apartment where the MLO allegedly sexually assaulted her. She jumped out of the kitchen window when the suspect became violent and slapped her several times across the face,” a police official who was part of the investigation team said.
The convener of the health department inquiry committee, Dr Abdul Majid, told Dawn that the victim girl said in her statement that the MLO raped her and when she tried to escape he became extremely violent and threw her off the kitchen window from his first-floor apartment.
“She denied the presence of any other person inside the apartment when the doctor allegedly sexually assaulted her. Similarly, going through her statement, one can’t find any signs of abduction of the victim,” said the police official.
The statement of the trainee nurse was at variance with the claim made by MPA Humera Alwani during her interaction with the media last week that the victim herself told her in the ICU that she had been abducted and gang-raped.The police, however, believed that the MLO’s driver and the victim’s colleague, who persuaded her to visit the MLO’s apartment, had already gone into hiding after the incident.
“With these two new names, relevant Sections of the Pakistan Penal Code will be incorporated in the FIR that had been lodged at the Saddar police station,” said SSP Amir Farooqi of Jamshed Town, who is heading the police investigation team. “We are trying hard to get hold of the two persons and I hope that they will soon be arrested.”
Suspect denies rape
In his statement recorded under Section 161 of the CrPC, the MLO conceded that the trainee nurse was present at his apartment on July 13 but denied that he assaulted her sexually.
“He claimed that, that day he picked up the trainee nurse from her residential area in Korangi in a friend’s car and both of them reached his apartment,” said an investigator quoting the suspect’s statement.
“During their stay at the apartment, they had some altercation and the MLO became violent and slapped the trainee nurse, who cried for help. In the meanwhile, somebody knocked at the door of the apartment and they became scared that they had been spotted by some people.”
The suspect told the police that he asked the trainee nurse to leave his apartment through the kitchen window. However, she lost her balance, fell down and sustained a serious head injury.
“The suspect said that a few minutes after the nurse was spotted lying injured on the ground and taken to the emergency unit for treatment, he noticed that people started gathering outside his apartment. This made him scared and he decided to escape through the kitchen window, but he also fell down,” the official quoting the suspect’s statement said.
Meanwhile, Advocate Javed Chattari, who said he represented the victim, told newsmen at the hospital that there was enormous pressure on his client and her family members to change her initial statement.
The JPMC spokesperson, Dr Azhar Khan, who recently replaced Additional Director Dr Seemi Jamali, said that the main concern of the hospital was to ensure the victim’s best treatment and it had nothing to do with police investigations.Dawn
